Videos by Category: Photos

If you want to watermark your photos before sharing them using a logo or other graphic, you can build a semi-transparent image in Pixelmator and then use an Automator Quick Action to easily apply that watermark to any image file. A special Pixelmator watermarking action helps to make it a one-step Automator workflow.

Apple has removed the direct link between the Photos app and Facebook in macOS Mojave. But it is still easy to upload Photos to Facebook using the Facebook website. You can use the Media option in the file open dialog, drag and drop into the file open dialog, drag directly onto the Facebook page, and a variety of other options. If you have trouble picking out a photo this way, you can always enlarge the photos you are viewing, or drag and drop direct from the Photos app or the Finder.

You can easily add captions and other elements to a photo right in the Photos app on your Mac. While there doesn't appear to be a captioning tool in Photos, you can edit a photo and use the default Markup extension to add text without leaving the app. You can always revert to the original photo or go back and edit your caption.

If you wish to have some of the photos on your Mac available in iCloud, but not others, a typical solution is to use two Photos libraries. But a more useful solution for some is to link some photos as referenced photos, keeping them separate from your Photos library while including them as linked photos. These items will not be synced to iCloud and will not be stored in your Mac's Photos library either. You can bring these photos into the library later on using the Consolidate command.

A quick and easy way to create a video slideshow with your photos is to use the built-in Slideshow function in the Photos app. You can just select some photos, stick with the defaults, and get a video to upload to YouTube or Facebook in less than a minute. Or, you can customize the theme, individual photos, text and more to create something a little more specific.

With Apple's Print service being retired after September 30, many people are wondering how to order prints, photo books, calendars and other products. Apple opened up Photos to allow third-party printing services last year. Already, several companies offer ordered prints and products directly from Photos. More will probably appear after first-party competition from Apple is gone.

You can use Preview to combine more than one image into a single image. By using a trick to start a new document, and then resizing, copying and pasting other images into the new document, you can create a collage of images. Then you can export in the format of your choice to use in video projects, online posting, and so on.

The Memories feature in the Photos app will alert you with new Memories albums from time to time. If you'd rather certain dates, people or locations not trigger memories in the future, you can indicate that. If you'd also like to disable the notifications for memories so you can just ignore them, you can do that as well on the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

You can quickly and easily create a website photo gallery using the Photos app on your Mac, iPhone or iPad. You can simply make it public and share the URL with your friends and family. Once the gallery is created, you can easily add more photos to it.

In the Photos app you can hide photos both on the Mac and on iOS. Hidden photos will disappear from Photos view, albums and other views, but they will appear in a special Hidden album. This feature is not meant to be a secure way to protect photos, but just a tool to hide photos before deleting them or to take off photos out of normal viewing methods when they don't belong there.

Learn how to crop your pictures in the Mac Photos app. You can drag the edges to redefine the cropping area and then reposition the picture inside the new area. You can also rotate or auto-rotate the image and the crop will adjust automatically to not leave any blank space in the corners. Cropping is non-destructive, so you can always revert to the original photo or export it.

You can export a still frame image from a video many different ways with the software that comes with your Mac. If you are already in iMovie, you can use the sharing function to export an image from the current frame in the timeline or a library clip. In Photos you can save a frame in a video to your Photos library as a picture, and you can also copy the current frame and paste it into another app. The easiest way is with QuickTime Player where you can copy the current frame and then paste it into Preview or any other app that handles images.

The Selective Color tool allows you to adjust all of the pixels that are a similar color in a photo. You have six slots to make up to six color adjustments. You can use this to change a color in a photo, make colors stand out more, or desaturate colors to change the emphasis objects.

The main Photo library view in Mac Photos doesn't let you choose a sort order. But you can easily view your photos sorted by time or title by creating a Smart Album and using that to view your photos instead. You can also sort your list of Photo albums by viewing all of the albums and choosing a sort option, or manually dragging and dropping the albums.

You can create calendars in the Photos app that use your photos as the pictures. You can customize each month to include one or more photos, plus captions. You can also specify the items to be included on each date by using your own calendars. When done, you can order the calendars from Apple or print them yourself.

A useful new feature of Photos 3.0 is the ability to see all of your imported photos organized by the time they were imported. You can see all of your imports going back in time. You can use this view like any other, jumping directly to editing or organizing.

With High Sierra there is now native functionality for editing your photos in external editors. You can edit them in apps like Acorn and Photoshop without needing to export the photo and bring it back in when done. And edits you make can be removed by reverting back to the original photo.

With macOS High Sierra you can unlock new features of your iPhone Live Photos. You can choose a new frame as the still image. You can set the video to loop or bounce. You can also use the video to simulate a long exposure photo. You can even export a loop or bouncing video as an animated GIF.

If you take a photo of someone with your iPhone and they have an iPhone too, you can immediately share the photo with them using AirDrop. To use AirDrop, you don't need to be on the same Wi-Fi network or have set up anything in advance. The photo sent is the full resolution image. This can be easier than exchanging phones to take pictures of each other or trying to take the same photo twice.

Learn how to preview a large number of images in macOS Finder. You can use the Preview pane, large icons, cover flow, the Quick Look window, the Preview app and the Finder slideshow feature. See how these techniques can help you quickly locate the right image.

The Retouch tool in the Mac Photos app makes it easy to remove spots and blemishes from your photos. You can simply click and drag to remove spots, or pull colors from another area of the photo.

You can use the Image Capture app to scan documents and pictures instead of any software that may have come with your scanner. This can extend the life of scanners with incompatible software and may give you more features.

Two of the most useful adjust controls in Photos are the Shadows and Highlights adjustments. You can bring out detail in dark or bright portions of a photo without changing the rest. An overall light adjustment slider also can bring out the real color of a photo.

There is no way in Photos to get a list of all of the photos that have no keyword tags applied to them. But with a little JavaScript in Automator you can add this command to Photos and use it with all photos or any selection of photos.

The People function in Photos for Sierra will recognize faces in your pictures and with some curation will allow you to label all of the people in your photos. There are many ways to assign faces to names.

Building a photo slideshow in Keynote is very quick and easy. You can simply drag and drop them into Keynote, add a transition and some music and then export as video. It is also easy to add text to any slide as captions.

You can alter the creation date of a file using the touch command in the Terminal. This can come in handy if you want to export a photo and have the creation date match the date the photo was taken.

It is easy to create a slideshow with iMovie using a photo album. In less than three minutes you can import the photos, add transitions, insert titles, and include music. You can then export the slideshow as a video to use on YouTube, your social networks, or show during a presentation.

On iPhones that support 3D Touch, you can quickly access camera functions and also preview and access photo functions. To get to the Camera functions, tap hard on the Camera icon. To get to the Photos functions, tap hard on a photo and swipe up.

If you have been taking Live Photos with your iPhone, you may find it useful to be able to extract the 3-second videos from the photos to upload to social media or use in video collages.